Various LLM smells

Author

Shiv (the site is titled Shiv's Page)

Published

28 May 2026

Kind

Short personal blog post with a list of examples

Original

shvbsle.in/various-llm-smells/

Subject

Writing with models

What it is

The author says they used an LLM to polish a math blog late last year. They later saw the same sentence shapes across the internet. The post collects examples under two headings, writing and websites.

What it says

• The author says LLM-polished drafts felt better, then the same sentence shapes appeared everywhere online.
• The post lists writing smells. These include punchlines, short-sentence runs and 'not just X, its Y'.
• The post lists website smells. These include the JetBrains Mono font, step bullets, identical buttons, cards and footnotes.
• The author says the post is not against AI creative use, only noticing.

What evidence it gives

The evidence is quoted lines from the author's deleted blog and a list of habits.

Interests and limits

This is one person's observation from one blog. The author says the post is just noticing things. No frequency data is given. Any images of the web design examples were not viewed.